I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing scholarship have included The Huffington Post, Salon, and Film Threat. Follow me at @ScottMendelson and "like" The Ticket Booth on Facebook.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

English: AMC Theatres Promenade 16, a 16-auditorium movie theater or multiplex. It is located at Westfield Shoppingtown Promenade, a shopping center in Woodland Hills. Photographed on May 19, 2006 by user Coolcaesar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those who missed it, venture capitalist Hunter Walk’s blog post, ‘Reinventing the Movie Theater‘, went viral two days ago, with most of the commentary being negative and much arguing that Mr. Walk represents everything wrong with humanity, especially humans who claim to like movies (I’ll stick to just disagreeing with his ideas). In brief, although you might as well just read the whole post as it’s pretty short, Mr. Walk is advocating that movie theaters should be catering to those who don’t want to “unplug” from their various devices for the two hours or so it takes to watch a movie in a darkened theater alongside fellow moviegoers. He basically wants the living room experience in a movie theater. But his alternative solution would make things worse in a perhaps unexpected way.

He states, and he emphasizes this in his defensive-but-empathetic follow-up post, that the solution isn’t so much forcing moviegoers who wish to watch first-run theatrical features in a dark and quiet theater to put up with his texts and emails. It’s rather for theaters to designate separate auditoriums for the various who want to watch a theatrical feature but also want to talk, text, and otherwise partake in what’s now referred to as “the Second Screen Experience”. For the record, encouraging film goers to text, talk, and view their films in well-lit theaters would arguably lead to the ruin of the theatrical experience. It would be altering the very nature of a movie theater in order to cater to those who would choose not to follow the longstanding rules of a multiplex.

On the surface, this is akin to allowing drivers to drive as fast as they want because, hey, some people want to drive really fast even if it negatively effects my driving experience. It’s a selfish impulse on its face, wanting to receive the benefits that come with a first run movie ticket in a way that harms my movie going experience. But on a practical level, Mr. Walk’s solution, of offering separate auditoriums for text-happy/chatty moviegoers, will only increase the harm of a very current problem. First of all, you run the risk of text-friendly theaters becoming more popular than “turn off your damn phone!” theaters, leaving traditional moviegoers segregated to the smallest auditoriums. Second of all, and this is a big one, there are only so many screens on which to show movies. We already have the biggest blockbusters taking up 2D, 3D, IMAX, and/or EXT screens. Now you want to give the biggest movies another screen just so certain moviegoers can play Candy Crush while they watch Pacific Rim?

Do you want to be in a position where your local multiplex doesn’t get that print of Fruitvale Station, even for just a week, because that available auditorium was reserved for another “second screen auditorium” of The Wolverine? It would be an exacerbation of a problem I’ve mentioned several times over the years. Even with theaters getting more and more screens, we still see a general paucity of options for first-run theatrical films outside of major moviegoing cities like Los Angeles or New York City. If you look at the various films that become art house hits, be it Mud, Bernie, or The Way, Way Back, you might notice something: These aren’t what you might consider an art house movie. They are basically mainstream comedies or dramas with far too few mainstream theaters available to screen them.

Ten years ago, films like The Place Beyond The Pines, The Perks of Being A Wall Flower, or The To-Do List would have been major studio wide releases. Today they struggle to break out of the art house ghetto or spend just a week or two at the very largest AMC or Cinemark multiplexes before awaiting discovery on DVD. Obviously something like Upstream Color isn’t going to be the kind of film to find success at the local Regal Cinemas, but what about an all-star drama about the financial meltdown like Margin Call? The would-be The Jazz Singer of Video On Demand was one of the first “real movies” to break out via same-day theatrical and VOD availability in late 2011. But the question no one asked was why an explicitly not “arty” drama starring Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, and Jeremy Irons wasn’t able to muster something approaching a wide release.

What we’ve seen is a plethora of the very kind of old-school movies that audiences claim to prefer to the big-budget spectacles, ones that qualify as dramas, thrillers, and even comedies, rendered “art house” purely by their inability to get wide releases. Obviously much of this is determined by which studio produces or distributes your film. Magnolia led the way with VOD and Roadside Attractions followed suit, with IFC joining the wave and other much smaller distributors following suit. Moreover, what would-be “small” movies we do get tend to come from newer distributors such as CBSCBS Films, Open Road, and Film District. They are new but have the muscle to get their films into wide or semi-wide release right out of the gate. Other studios, such as Focus Features and FoxFox Searchlight, tend to pick and choose which films go wide and which die in platform.

But the result is the same: Seemingly mainstream films that exist outside the arena of big-budget fantasy, CGI animation, and/or bawdy comedy co-exist in a segregated theatrical distribution system. The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone, Cedar Rapids, The Company Men, Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Lords of Salem, and/or Trance. All were technically mainstream genre exercises, most with major movie stars on the poster, yet all did the art house routine or the blink-and-you miss it semi-wide release so your local multiplex could play the big six or so blockbusters on 2-4 screens apiece. The ever-expanding multiplex market has meant not that more films have a shot at wider (and longer) theatrical releases, but rather that the major studio releases merely have more screens on which to occupy.

And now, if companies like AMC or Cinemark deign to take Mr. Walk’s suggestion, and there have long been rumblings that they might like to do something of that nature, then the mainstream theatrical distribution system would have one more way to push out all but the biggest studio releases from mainstream theatrical exhibition. The irony of course is that Mr. Walk’s suggestion would further push out the very kinds of films that he claims are allegedly worth his undivided attention (as for his unfortunately shared sentiment that some movies don’t require our full attention in a dark theater, I’ll merely disagree and expand upon that later).

As I wrote back in June, there has been real progress made in getting so-called “real movies” back into multiplexes over the last few years, both due to the new distributors with enough muscle to book 2,500-3,000 screens on opening weekend, as well as studios coming to a kind of fiscal sanity in terms of mid-budget genre fare outside of the summer season. But the biggest problem is that the advent of 3D (and to a lesser extent, IMAX) has helped to reverse the positive trends of the multiplex system, with the biggest would-be tent poles taking up many of the screens leaving no room for the kinds of films that would have been wide releases just ten years ago.

So let’s all just say no both to texting/talking in a brightly-lit theater, as well as encouraging alternate auditoriums where the “second screen experience” is encouraged. It’s not just a blow against civilized movie-going, the ability to turn off the constant flow of digital information, and the idea that people should actually follow the rules of the establishments they choose to visit; it’s a blow for variety in the kinds of movies that arrive at a theater near you.

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The mistake the author makes is he assumes we all want to see those artsy drama movies. I can’t stand those movies! When September hits and all the oscar-bait movies are released I stop going to the movies. The theaters know this. They make a lot more money from the majority of the public who like me love the big action, adventure, fantasy, and sci-fi movies.

Who are they going to cater to? Us or the much smaller artsy crowd? I think it’s us because the summer movies keep getting bigger and better.

The mistake the commenter makes is he assumes what he wants is what everyone wants. When September hits and all the Oscar-bait movies are released, I start seeing many of the guests I haven’t seen since April return to my theatre, happy the big action, adventure, fantasy and sci-fi movies are gone for a while.

Theatres need to cater to ALL audiences, ALL the time. I know this as I’ve seen it every day for the past twenty-seven years as a movie theatre manager. Summer movies might be getting bigger (and there’s a valid argument whether they’ve gotten better), but they’re only here for a few short weeks. Movie theatres are open every day of the year.

The whole idea of texting and talking and using cell phones and social media etc during movies is just dumb, pointless, and dangerous.

People who want to devote half their attention to watching a screen and the other half to texting and talking aloud already have a theater for that — their homes. If you want that experience, you can have it almost everywhere else on the planet via your TV, your phone, your computer, your iPad, etc etc etc. It’s like arguing McDonalds should open an alternate version of their restaurant where you can bring your own food and your TV, and just sit in their restaurant to eat your food and watch your TV. I see no actual rational reason for it at all.

The truth is that this caters to people who are indeed addicted to their phones and social media, who cannot stand having to go any length of time without being “connected.” It’s obsessive behavior, but that’s their choice — why expect society to remake entire industries to cater to your compulsion, in a way that literally renders the industry redundant?

When theaters become nothing but a giant living room, the distinction between a movie screen and your 60+ inch flatscreen TV becomes blurred and inevitably it will harm the theater industry as that distinction is erased. It literally becomes merely a question of screen size, and home theaters are already advancing toward larger screen capacity while retaining image quality — if theaters help promote the notion there is increasingly little difference between going out to a theater and sitting at home, what do they really think will happen in the long run?

Meanwhile, pirating of movies will explode. If the industry thinks there’s a problem now, just imagine when every kid is uploading YouTube clips in real-time from the newest movie. The quality of tablet and phone video is improving dramatically every year, and there will be pirated copies of these films all over the place if theaters allow this ridiculous “theaters are now your living room” experience.

Not only that, but audience reactions rendered in real time on Twitter and Facebook etc will — I guarantee you, just wait and see — tend to lean toward the snide and negative attitudes, since in general online interactions on those mediums are so often driven by the desire to out-snark each other and act too cool to like anything etc. That mentality already drives too much of modern online film review and critique, and it will get worse if theaters advance a new model that encourages such interactions during movies.

Plot twists will also become impossible to keep secret, as will other surprises and cameos and endings etc. Movies will have to account for the fact there is no secrecy or privacy anymore — and WE will all have to account for that too.

Why? Because even if you aren’t attending movies in those annoying new “text and talk” theaters, you’ll be exposed to the results online everywhere you go from now on. How will you like it when your Facebook and Twitter and Google+ etc feeds are comprised of a large amount of movie-experience messages, often giving away information and key scenes etc? Remember, even if you trust your friends not to do that directly, if anyone THEY follow does it, there’s a chance it might become visible to you as well if they “like” it or comment on it or retweet it etc.

Lastly, let’s be very honest here — do you really think that the folks who push for this and would be attending movies in the “text and talk” theaters will make a distinction between those theaters and any other theaters or venues, once they get used to having their self-indulgence catered to? I don’t buy it for a second. Which means get ready for an even larger amount of annoying texting and talking in other theaters and events, too. The push to get theaters to let people indulge their compulsive need to stay “plugged in” every second of their lives will increase that sense of entitlement to do so and for everyone else to put up with it, and the behavior will likely increasingly spill over elsewhere.

People who want this already have options, the world already mostly caters to their compulsion everywhere. That compulsion has been shown to be dangerous, as too many people won’t even stop texting while driving despite how many people are injured and killed due to this stupid, irresponsible behavior. They do it while walking, running into other people or crossing against the light at intersections and so on. They do it in restaurants and parks and cafes, they do it while trying to check out at a register while everyone has to wait for them to shut their phone off and pay attention to the real world around them. They do it everywhere, all the time, and the world mostly puts up with it and they can mostly stay “plugged in” all they want as long as they aren’t literally almost killing people (as in a car).

But they want more. More, more, more. Theaters are explicitly designed to offer a DIFFERENT experience than sitting on your couch blabbing to everyone around you and talking on the phone. Theaters have to offer a different experience, or they are obsolete. And people need to stop thinking that they have some need or right to do anything they want everywhere they want whenever they want. If you can’t put your phone down for two hours to sit and watch a movie in a theater, that’s fine — well, actually it’s obsessive and kind of crazy, but it’s your life so be as compulsive as you want I guess — just stay home and have exactly the experience you want in a place where that’s already totally normal. Or go on the bus and do the same thing, or to a friend’s house, or sit on the curb, or sit in a cafe, or wherever. Watch movies while texting and talking out-loud anywhere else, just not in a theater that’s supposed to NOT just be an extension of your same myopic self-centered behavior in the rest of the world.

And before anyone makes the absurd strawman argument that we’re talking about wanting silent, sterile movie watching without any human contact or emotion etc (as some of the silly pro-texting-etc arguments have pretended), let’s be clear about some things that are NOT included in this discussion. Shouting “Yeah!” at the screen or cheering or shouting “Oh no!” etc are totally normal and fine, and I don’t want people to not get excited and express excitement impulsively during films. We’ve all done that, and that’s happened for as long as movies have been around. Likewise, a parent with a cell phone set to buzz for an emergency call from the babysitter, or a doctor on-call with a buzzing phone, is different. Emergencies happen, and that’s understandable and I don’t for a second think those are irresponsible or selfish behaviors, nor do I think parents and doctors should be denied any chance to see movies just because they might need to have their phones vibrate to alert them to an emergency or something. Those situations are all different, and not what we’re talking about here, obviously.

You bring up a good point. How did Trance not get a wide release? Its not some artsy drama. Its a fast paced popcorn thriller with an A-list director and a famous cast. It’s violent, sexy, and pulpy. Its also great. Yet somehow this was an arthouse flop? I could easily have seen it being a big mainstream hit.